Fancy a flutter on Liz Truss being Reform's next leader?

One can bet on pretty much anything these days, from the next Pope to the time of the first throw-in in a football match. But here’s one for the purist: having a flutter on who will succeed Nigel Farage if and when he steps down/is forced out as leader of Reform.

Bookies Ladbrokes is offering odds online and, amid a few intriguing options, is mayfly-like former prime minister Liz Truss, who in the space of just a few days has moved in from 20/1 to 16/1 after it was reported that she had been holding talks with the party.

The Times reported at the weekend that Truss had been offering Farage’s mob advice and, rather than being the more useful “Don’t do anything I did”, amounted to how to take on “the [Establishment] blob”. Truss apparently proffered tips on how to engineer a major overhaul of the state, something she singularly failed to do in her 49 days in office.

Truss seems an unlikely immediate successor, given that she is (a) not an MP, (b) not a member of Reform, (c) unlikely to win a seat given that she lost the previously rock-solid Tory South West Norfolk last year making her the first former premier to lose a parliamentary seat since Ramsay MacDonald in 1935 and (d) currently spending her time traversing the United States giving interviews to any podcaster with 25 subscribers.

So where might there be better value? In keeping with the bulk of Reform’s local election candidates next week, most of Ladbrokes’ offerings are actually Tories, with Robert Jenrick on 7/1, Boris Johnson and Suella Braverman on 12/1, Priti Patel on 16/1 and Jacob Rees-Mogg on 25/1.

Currently deputy leader, and former leader, Richard Tice, is favourite at 5/4, although he may be forced to spend less of his time in Dubai, where girlfriend Isabel Oakeshott lives. And he’s only slightly ahead of second-favourite Rupert Lowe – who’s 3/1 despite being turfed out of the party by Farage after publicly questioning the Dear Leader’s omnipotence. Roll up, roll up!